If it means that I can transfer money overseas without paying a ridiculously high fee, it has value to me. Of course, people have to view it as currency first, so that I can use bitcoins directly - otherwise I'd get fees going from one currency to bitcoins, and from bitcoins to the other. In any case, not being a big fan of banks, I am tempted to give this kind of project a try.

I try to make the distinction between looks & competence. I will look for signs of the latter in the person's behavior. Clothing can send a message both ways: an impeccable suit might tell you that the person is tidy and conservative, but it might also tell you that the person spends a good deal of their time looking pretty rather than working for you. You can be competent & tidy and not wear a suit. I hope people aren't basing their decision on how the bank's employees are dressed.

You might argue that a suit nowadays does not mean anything in a bank, it's a neutral signal to the customers, so they will make their decision based on the products the banks offers. But it remains an unnecessary distinction to me, like wigs, robes, and other traditional types of clothing.

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For the same reason we like to read the biography of anyone whose work had a certain impact on society: to compare ourselves to them, to try and find out what motivated them to act that way. Would you have leaked government information, if you had been given the chance? What separates you from Julian Assange? What do you have in common? Is what we know about him relevant to determine how he came to leak this information?

As always, we try to create models, or build theories, that tell us something about ourselves. It is very unlikely that this article tells us much (and I personally don't give much credit to its veracity), but we still read it. If only for the analytical exercise of assessing its relevance.

Math indeed changes the way we think: we become more analytical. It also helps us think in an abstract way, so that a seemingly complex environment does not prevent us from making progress when facing problems. For instance if you have an equation like x+3y+5z=5+5z+3y, we can see that x=5 ; now apply that to computers: lots of people will say "I don't know anything about computers" and will not understand the message "you have run out of disk space", even if they know what disk space is (and they do understand English). They will refuse to think because the whole complexity of the environment, which can be taken out of the equation, has scared them off. And today, most of what we do involves an environment that we do not fully understand. Math helps us ignoring it when possible.

Your experience is that of one belonging to a minority, and the response of most people to that minority. Would be the same if you were extremely handsome, if you had one arm, if you had a Lamborghini. Racism is more common than 'Lamborghinism', so it gets more attention. But it's the same phenomenon, and you cannot blame the average Joe for categorizing you according to the minority you represent.

A more general solution to the problem where people don't do their job properly is to raise the salary for that position. Someone who earns a lot will do much more to do a good job, and more hard-working, honest people will apply for the job. If you want better cops, paying more taxes seems a necessary (but not sufficient) condition.